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THE MINISTER FOR Education has condemned religious organisations for failing to help meet the costs of residential institutional child abuse.
Richard Bruton said that religious congregations who managed institutions where abuse of children occurred over a long period were failing to pay adequate amounts to survivors and investigation costs.
He labelled this failure as “hugely disappointing and massively frustrating”.
The minister was speaking following the publication of a report by the Comptroller & Auditor General (C&AG) which showed that in total €209 million has been received by the Irish Government from religious groups to address historical child abuse.
This is compared to €1.5 billion having been spent by Government so far on all elements of residential abuse – including an inquiry, a survivor redress scheme and related survivor supports.
“As Minister for Education and Skills I find this hugely disappointing and massively frustrating, that the organisations responsible for protecting children and managing the institutions in which these horrendous acts took place would apparently place so little value on that responsibility,” Bruton said.
Inquiry
Investigations at the beginning of the 2000s into historical child abuse by religious organisations revealed large-scale, horrific abuse which occurred in institutions, the vast number of which were run by the Catholic Church.
The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (commonly known as the Ryan Commission) unveiled a vast amount of systematic institutional abuse going back decades.
The Commission focused mainly on allegations that emerged from 60 Reformatory and Industrial Schools run by Catholic orders and funded by the Department of Education.
In 2002, an Indemnity Agreement was reached by the then-Government and the religious congregations, which offered €128 million towards addressing the historical abuse. The C&AG report found that €112.9 million of this has been realised.
Following the publication of the Ryan report in 2009, religious groups offered €352.6 million towards the abuse costs.
This was later reduced to €192.8 million. Of this, so far €96.1 million has been realised.
This means that of the entire costs of the abuse, religious organisations have so far paid just under 14%.
“Unfortunately as a result of agreements put in place by previous Governments we have no legal mechanisms open to us to compel the congregations to meet these targets,” Bruton said today.
Equal split
It has been the policy of successive governments that all the costs associated with institutional child abuse should be split 50-50 between the Irish State and religious groups.
However the religious groups never signed up to this agreement and Bruton said that the Irish State had no legal mechanism to compel them to pay more. He said that far from giving 50%, religious groups were now giving less money than they previously committed.
“In fact, the progress has gone in reverse, with one substantial offer having been withdrawn and some valuations falling,” he said.
Ordinary members of the Church, who look to these organisations as sources of authority and good, will be among the most let down by these developments.
The C&AG report also laid out a number of recommendations for the Government, including implementing reviews of the Ryan Commission and evaluating whether existing survivor supports are adequate.
On course
In a statement to TheJournal.ie, the Christian Brothers said that the C&AG report predates “significant payments” made by them.
They said: “Despite a dramatic reduction in asset values throughout the recession, the Congregation is on course to honour in full the voluntary pledges it made to redress and to education and welfare in 2009.
“The C&AG Report predates significant payments by the Congregation. Of the €34 million cash pledge, €24m has been honoured with the final €10million being paid on a phased basis in 2017 linked to property sales.
“Plans are also at an advance stage for the transfer of playing fields worth well over €100m to ERST, for the benefit of its 37,000 students and ultimately the State of which they are part. It had been hoped to make this transfer to a joint Trust between the State and ERST, but this proposal was not accepted.
These measures, together with prior transfers by the Christian Brothers, will bring total contributions to redress, welfare and education to over €600 million.
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Fine analysis. Putin is already beaten but because he’s staked everything on winning, he has no way out. Not just his political future but his life is on the line if he capitulates…
This article by Tom Clonan is a classic example of Western media propaganda. Tom lays put exactly why he thinks Russia can’t win, where “winning” means making the entire territory of Ukraine a vassal of the Kremlin, as it was during the USSR period. But the propaganda is in what Tom *doesnt* say, which is that it is now clear that Western sanctions will not topple the Putin regime, the West will not make Russia a vassal in the unipolar US-led world order and even the lesser goal of Ukraine recovering all five annexed Oblasts seems almost impossible to achieve at this point, with 300,000 Russian reservists entering the war in the coming weeks. Tom is correct, Russia can’t win this war completely. Tom won’t say that the West cannot win either.
@Rob Dowling:
Of all the comments and considering the blatant bias continuously spewed out by the ‘expert’ Tom Clonan, your comment is the nearest to a rational, objective analysis of all the comments so far. And, before you all start, stating a rational, objective position is the exact opposite of taking sides.
@Rob Dowling: the collective West could beat the russians in a week. the Ukranian army can expel the russians if given the proper heavy weaponry to hit targets in russia
@Rian Lynch: “Could” is just chit chat talk in the comments section of the Journal. I could say the Russians “could” turn every major city in Europe into a red hot molten lake of radioactive sludge using nuclear-tippes hypersonic missiles but of course I don’t, because it’d be auld talk based on “could” hypothetical this and that. The actual *fact* is Putin wont be toppled at this stage. So the West can’t *win* and many people remain in denial about that fact, clearly.
@Rob Dowling: the West isnt fighting thats a fact for you. Putin is grinding Russia into oblivion and is reigniting the cold war.
@Rob Dowling: a win for Ukraine just requires them to push the Russians back to the border, and whether they are able to do that depends on who runs out of munitions first. Also, those 300K Russian reservists are likely to be low quality trops with little training or combat experience and most of them support staff rather than front line soldiers. Many of them will have been pulled from other parts of the border, leaving the motherland dangerously exposed.
@Rob Dowling: All you can know is that Western sanctions have not toppled Putin’s regime YET. Any number of factors could bring about regime change in Russia.
@Rob Dowling: 300,000 untrained and underequipped people fighting against an army with better weapons, better training, more experienced and more motivation to fight.
Soes not sound like a fair fight to me.
@Declan McKenna: Tom Clonan is an expert a well known and respected one.
@Gary Kearney:
Time will reveal the accuracy of your statement and of his ‘expert’ opinions.
Excellent article. Unfortunately the only way this war will end is when putin no longer exists. Putin will eventually end up hiding out in a bunker waiting for the end.victory to the Ukraine and its warrior people.
@Paddy Ryan: depends on who replaces him.
@Paddy Ryan: Unfortunately they are hawks in the Kremlin that are far more extreme than Putin. I don’t see a happy ending for the Ukraine or the world to this conflict.
Three things have been truly astounding to me: 1) the obscene level of corruption in Russia from the top all the way to the bottom: materiel not being fit for purpose because maintenance funds were being funnelled into various pockets along the way; recruits sent into the meat grinder with barely any training and having to kit themselves out because their officers stole their original kit. 2) the sheer bloodthirstiness of the mainstream Russian media, calling on the army to hit Ukraine even harder, kill any Ukrainian who isn’t pro-Russian, level more of their their cities, up to and including nuclear strikes on Ukraine – and even the UK. 3) A sizeable chunk of the Russian population is ok with this ‘SMO’ against their so-called brothers.
Russia couldn’t beat Ireland if all males were called up and armed with billions worth of weapons from NATO. It’s interesting that Russia have said they are increasing their army by 40%, to 1.5 million. No side will be ‘winning’ anytime soon.
I read a Guardian analyst claim that Crimea is Zelensky’s greatest bargaining chip, the implication being that in the end it would be ceded to Russia as part of a peace deal, and that Zelensky knows this but cannot say anything other than that there will be no compromise.
I wonder like everyone else how and when this will end. I’ve noticed that even the suggestion of compromise is highly controversial. I’ve also noticed how the Kremlin has changed the narrative from fighting Ukrainian nazis to satanists and finally to NATO, with the latter enemy apparently quite succesful in garnering national support for the war. The idea is that Ukraine is forced to fight on behalf of NATO and US world domination, and seemingly this idea is popular among Russians who feel the collapse of the USSR was a humiliation that is worth resisting against.
Given all that, I wonder what the real options are. In the face of continuing Russian defeats popular support may actually increase, enticing Putin to keep escalating, by drafting more and more people into the army and eventually using nuclear weapons (the ultimate scorched earth).
There seems to be a reliance in the west that the Kremlin regime may fall, but whether that solves anything depends on what replaces it. So without compromise (the Crimea theory) there is either continuing escalation (with this or a similar/worse new Kremlin regime), or the war ends (under a new pragmatic Kremlin regime). That means two out of three options imply a length and bad, and possibly very bad war.
I hope as Tom says next year will bring common sense and humanity, but realistically I think we’re in this for the long haul. Very long.
@Mick Tobin: sorry mick but your analysis is flawed because Russia simply doesn’t have the economic strength for a long war plus the hardcore western sanctions are destroying its economy as well
Ukraine has already lost. for Russia winning is preventing Russian in Donbas from being attacked and preventing Ukraine from becoming a NATO member and EU state have proven they are not sovereign.
Germany industry is in melt down the US blew up Germany pipeline and Germans said nothing while it gas dependent industries close.
Russia used a tiny army in Ukraine that is about to change
@Joeohah: utter claptrap ,Russian bot
Unfortunately Ukraine cannot win this war either. What exactly is NATO’s end game? The longer this war goes on, the greater the risk of a full scale nuclear conflict.
Only the naive believe that the US narrative that this war is Putin war this war was 30 years in the making no matter the leadership in Russia this war was provoked that is evident from the US matra Putin’s unprovoked war.
Russian in Ukraine were left stateless by the West hero the naive Gorbachev and Reagan.
Think Putin will be toppled from within, soon enough too, t.g.
@Caoimhghin Whyte: Be careful what you wish for. There are hawks in the Kremlin far more extreme than Putin that will more than likely resort to even more extreme measures.
RETIRED COLONEL DOUGLAS MACGREGOR AS A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEWhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NohouAK1deg
If I had been Putin, I would have mounted an attack solely on the Donetsk front. It would have been much easier to justify in terms of aiding the Russian-speaking minority in the area, and Western opinion would have been more divided. As it is, Putin has done incalculable damage to Russia’s own interests and, most worryingly, to the movement for peace and neutrality in Europe.
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